What if a whole game was released in this episodic manner, level by level?

"The French software giant plans on releasing Assassin’s Creed III for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on Oct. 30, with a Nov. 18 date for the Wii U (PC gamers: Sorry, no Assassin’s Creed III for you until Nov. 20). Within the first six months of the open-world stealth game’s debut, Ubisoft has five separate add-on packs in store for you.

Ubisoft is pricing the season pass, which grants users access to all five DLC releases, at $29.99 on PlayStation Network and 2,400 Microsoft Points ($30) on Xbox Live.

Three of the content packs deal with an alternate history of the American Revolution in which George Washington dropped democracy in favor of adopting a crown. Ubisoft tells the story of The Tyranny of King Washington episodically across several of the DLC releases."

FIVE add-on packs?! Wow.

Did Assassin's Creed I and II have similar roll-out strategies, or is this new?